The human nose can distinguish one trillion different scents—an extraordinary feat that requires 10 million specialized nerve cells, or neurons, in the nose, and a family of more than 400 dedicated genes. But precisely ...

The chili pepper, from an evolutionary perspective, is the tomato's long-lost spitfire cousin. They split off from a common ancestor 19 million years ago but still share some of the same DNA. While the tomato plant went on ...

A new NYU Abu Dhabi study suggests for the first time that actin, which is a cytoskeleton protein found in the cell, is critical to regulating the genome—the genetic material of an organism—during the formation of "neurons" ...

Not only is air pollution bad for our lungs and heart, it turns out it could actually be making us less intelligent, too. A recent study found that in elderly people living in China, long-term exposure to air pollution may ...

Scientists have plenty of ways to watch as individual neurons in a brain fire, sending electrical signals from one to the next, but they all share a basic problem. Each method, whether it involves electrical probes, chemical ...

A research group from Kumamoto University, Japan, has discovered a new neurogenic mechanism responsible for brain development. By applying proprietary technology to detect trace proteins in living organisms, they found that ...

University of Minnesota researchers have broken new ground in the rapidly advancing field of 3-D printing: Creating stem cell-infused scaffolds that could be implanted in spinal cords to repair nerve damage.

In the last decade or so, 3-D printing has experienced a surge in popularity as the technology has become more precise and accessible. Now, researchers from the University of Saskatchewan are looking at how we can use 3-D ...

Neuron

A neuron (pronounced /ˈnjʊərɒn/ N(Y)OOR-on, also known as a neurone or nerve cell) is an excitable cell in the nervous system that processes and transmits information by electrochemical signalling. Neurons are the core components of the brain, the vertebrate spinal cord, the invertebrate ventral nerve cord, and the peripheral nerves. A number of specialized types of neurons exist: sensory neurons respond to touch, sound, light and numerous other stimuli affecting cells of the sensory organs that then send signals to the spinal cord and brain. Motor neurons receive signals from the brain and spinal cord and cause muscle contractions and affect glands. Interneurons connect neurons to other neurons within the same region of the brain or spinal cord. Neurons respond to stimuli, and communicate the presence of stimuli to the central nervous system, which processes that information and sends responses to other parts of the body for action. Neurons do not go through mitosis, and usually cannot be replaced after being destroyed, although astrocytes have been observed to turn into neurons as they are sometimes pluripotent.